S&S, Hachette and Other Heavy Hitters Support Delay of E-Reprint
So now Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins and others have announced they will delay eBook formats of Hardcover releases. Which is probably because they got reamed for the whole business of trying to slap Hardcover prices on eBooks when there was absolutely no comparison or justification. This all goes back to the pricing problems they had recently with Amazon and Target and Walmart putting Hardcover prices at around $10.00
“Authors get the most publicity at launch and need to strike while the iron is hot,” argued an Amazon spokesperson. “If readers can’t get their preferred format at that moment, they may buy a different book or just not buy a book at all.”
We are seeing this same battle play out over Redbox $1-a-night video kiosks and several major movie studios.
If you can rent a movie for next to nothing, then maybe you won’t buy them — or worse, you may not even go to the theater. The three studios want to delay shipping new DVD releases to the kiosks for several weeks after they’ve hit shelves at retailers and other rental outfits like Netflix and Blockbuster.
By the way, Redbox is seen as winning this battle. The consumer usually does.
So here’s how I see it and lets take the best seller Amazon Kindle for my example. The point is once a person buys a electronic gadget like a Kindle for $300.00 to read books he will orient away from Hardcover and even bookstores for that matter and focus on what is available online in eBook format. The customer focus will move from physically going to a bookstore or looking at *This Just In* Hardcover shelves, the domain of Traditional Publishing, to what is offered through the eBook listings that Amazon conveniently & wirelessly provides with every Kindle. A new delivery channel that does not have shelves or cardboard displays that Amazon controls.
That means simply if a Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins decides to take their authors off those Amazon sales lists by delaying eBooks then they make those authors essentially disappear (Bad for authors, no sale for you, no launch publicity for you) from the Kindle customers sight when looking for new eBooks to buy. Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins can no longer control the delivery channel so what author does get noticed… A Samhain or Loose Id or any ePublisher smart enough to see that there is no love on Amazon for a particular publisher or author at the point of sale on a Kindle. Hell, even Harlequin knows better. It’s only what you present the Kindle customer to buy wirelessly that is important a behavior often seen at most supermarket book stands.
If that eBook customer no longer sees your new bright shiny book who cares? Not many so far but that damn eBook buying crowd grows daily and is expected to grow extremely huge this year alone.
To eBook customers though you are dead meat with no visibility and no more publicity at launch because the Traditional Publishers want to fight their battle over Hardcovers and those bookstores currently heading for bankruptcy even when we all know that eventually they and all those Hardcovers going to end up in the $10.00 book bin at KMART or Target or Walmart anyway. My suggestion is make sure you get a GOOD advance because it’s gonna be a while for you to make any money when the Smart Tablets start taking over as eBook Readers.
eBooks and their technology is where the public hype and focus will remain for a long time coming because eBooks are the new thing and eBooks, unlike Hardcovers, are capable of being extremely convenient and cost effective. Which takes us right back to that $10.00 book bin at KMART anyway but at least no one really spends that much making or buying eBooks. Why when I can get discounts at Books-on-Board or Omnilit or Fictionwise?
UPDATE!
Responding to Nat Sobel, Cranky-Style
Booksquare: A Long, Detailed Look at Distribution Windows
Kassia does a bang up job showing the utter stupidity of Traditional Book Publishers wanting HardCover books to equal first run movies. She makes the case that there is no such comparison and I agree. As I said with the Redbox legalities going on the distribution models are changing for everyone including the Movie Industry so the Traditional Book Publishers will again only work to hurt themselves and their authors by delaying eBook formats. They have no real “windows” of distribution and never did because the people who buy HardCover ARE NOT the same people who buy PaperBack and so on. It is becoming apparent Traditional Book Publishers do not even know their own customers buying habits anymore. That is no surprise.
Tags: eBook CommentaryTags: eBook Commentary
Chris wrote,
Seems like they’d be wisest to get their own ebook versions out there when they release the hardcover… make it easier to buy an ebook than to track down a scanned copy (esp with developments like this in book scanning), or they’re really shooting themselves in the foot/feet…
Link | December 12th, 2009 at 9:09 am
TeddyPig wrote,
Yeah I loved how Kassia slammed the old fucker with the “see how easy it is for me to Google a pirate copy of your precious Hardcover old man”.
That is the unfortunate fact of life. These publishers make the author go out and play Little Dutch Boy most of the time with the online piracy. They have not invested in tracking software or anything and I don’t think the idiots are planning on it either. Now they are playing this game undermining authors potential profits further and basically blowing their companies up in the process and making a mess of Traditional Publishing because they do not get it.
I honestly do not see the upside for the authors I would so be heading for the hills and not letting these guys have ANY DIGITAL RIGHTS AT ALL despite the advances. Simply do not let them have your DIGITAL RIGHTS because they are proving they do not know how to maximize those profits.
Link | December 12th, 2009 at 9:37 am
TeddyPig wrote,
OMG Chris that article $300 HardCover pirating is here… OMG!
Yep this is a bad year for Traditional Publishing.
Link | December 12th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Chris wrote,
Oh yeah. If there was a ebook copy of a new book, I might buy it. No way will I buy a hardcover, unless it’s something damned special – the last one I bought was an autographed copy of The Graveyard Book. Anyway, this change to “protect” the hardcover market loses that ebook sale and sends me off to the library instead of purchasing.
Interesting that, since buying my ereader in April, I’ve purchased more books (ebooks)/spent more on books than I have in any other year of my life. Ebook publishers are providing things I want to read, at more or less reasonable prices, and that I can’t get from the library.
I’d love to read something comparing the arrival of the paperback with the arrival of the ebook – I have to imagine that hardcover publishers were tossing similar language about.
Link | December 12th, 2009 at 10:27 am
TeddyPig wrote,
I think there is commentary like that if you read up on Pulp Westerns and Pulp Fiction. Those were where the paperbacks really started out at and yes it took a while for Publishers to invest in them which is why Penguin became associated with the term paperback and then Pocket Books came out. The first original works to show up started the whole genre craze with Sci-fi and Romance etc etc.
Woolworths the discount store (Sound familiar?) was the first company to put them out on sale.
Link | December 12th, 2009 at 10:42 am
December 2009: Here Is Why Traditional Publishing Just Died… | The Naughty Bits wrote,
[...] Hardcover book hurt the chances of the author of that BRAND NEW Hardcover book making any profit by delaying the availability of an eBook format for the next 8 months while that guys new file is sitting on [...]
Link | December 12th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Chris wrote,
Liked this Gizmodo article. Let me sum up: “Huh, that book isn’t available. Well, pooey on you, publisher, I’ll just go buy a different ebook, ‘cos I ain’t gonna hop in my car to buy a stoopid hardcover.”
Link | December 15th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Death Of A Business Model Part Three | The Naughty Bits wrote,
[...] So have we not heard this whole thing before recently? You know the whole “They are discounting our hardcovers stop them Mr. Government Policeman!” even over in other countries. Oh and the other thing they want to do is delay eBooks while they try and sell hardcovers. [...]
Link | January 31st, 2010 at 4:59 am